This thread is getting very large and people aren't reading the full thread, leading to a lot of pointless duplication and off-topic material cluttering up the thread. Staff requested people only talk about this item, but let's make this clear now:

Giving legal advice regarding ownership, selling, Nintendo, Sony or anything else (you are most likely NOT a lawyer and, even if you are, it is unlikely you are an IP specialist in the electronics and gaming industries).

Giving advice on what the owner should do with it (this includes advising whether he should sell, how much he should sell it for, how he should store it, whether he should open it, that it should be in a museum, whether he should take it to a game shop, advising someone else he should take it to, what power adapter to use, whether he should dump the contents of the cartridge/CD...) - it is his to do with as he pleases

Making an offer to purchaseit. The owner has stated that it is NOT for sale. In any event, he is a new user and does not meet our requirements to sell, plus this is NOT a marketplace post, If you HAVE to make a genuine and reasonable offer, do so via a private conversation - and don't be upset if you don't get a response! .

Offering to send the owner a PSU.These are common and he will be able to find one himself with ease.

Asking what is on the cartridge/CD. He doesn't know - but if and when he finds out, it'll be posted.

Let's keep the discussion friendly and positive - any flaming or being disrespectful to other members will be dealt with.

If you have something to say, make sure you can back it up with FACT. Wikipedia is not a good source for fact unless a credible source is listed (in which case, quote that instead) - for example, there is NO evidence that there were 200 of these made, sent out and recalled. Also, try to check that something hasn't already been posted in the thread, and check your facts. Here are a few key points:

Asianat0r is the OP of this thread, but has no involvement with the machine.

The item was first shared on Reddit by analogueboy, who is Dnldbld on ASSEMbler. He is the owner of the item (well, his Dad is!) It was shared here shortly before Reddit went dark, hence we were quoted as source in many articles.

Dnldbld's Dad DID NOT work for Sony, or Nintendo. He worked for a bank, as did Olaf Olafsson, who worked for Sony before that. He left the item behind, Dnldbld's Dad was told to throw some items out when the company folded and this was amongst them.

Dnldbld has a cartridge with the machine, which may or may not be related. He bellieves he still has a CD in his attic somewhere, too. The contents of both are unknown.

Brian has nothing to do with the unit. He used to work for Sony. He is legitimate.

The patents have been posted in the SNES CD history discussion thread - please don't duplicate them here. However, if you find any that haven't been shared in the other thread, by all means post them... in the other thread!
Anyone who can't comply with the above requests will have their posts removed and a warning point issued. Anyone breaking forum rules (e.g. flaming or insulting other members) will be dealt with more severely.

Please also remember...

TRY NOT TO DOUBLE POST. USE THE MULTI-QUOTE FEATURE OR THE EDIT BUTTON!

My dad worked for a company, apparently one of the guys he used to work with, I think his name was Olaf, used to work at Nintendo and when my dads company went bankrupt, my dad found it in a box of "junk" he was supposed to throw out.

I have not had a chance to boot her up, I don't have a power cable at the moment, but it seems like it's a pretty common DC cable. I'll have to get one and see how it goes.

To answer one question, this is a prototype of the PlayStation from when it was compatible with SNES carts and not an add-on for the SNES. This was cancelled due to Nintendo, a day after the Play Station as it was (and in this prototype) was announced, announcing that they were going to make an add-on with Phillips. As you'd expect, Sony did not like this.

[caveat - I last posted here under user name Jet-X. Shut email addy down years ago, so reregistered after article today hence new user post. But I've been here before and even sent prototype games to Assembler)

Wanted to chime in on a few things. I worked at Sony Imagesoft in the early SNES days when Olaf was head of the company. I also saved one of the development systems for the SNES from the garbage (this one specifically, covered in a previous thread on Assembler years ago; http://playstationmuseum.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/SNESCD-Proto1.jpg ). It now resides with a friend of mine who is still at Sony.

I believe this unit is real. Few notes for discussion purposes:

1. Olaf had one sitting in his office, which was in NY (and explains the find on the east coast of the subject of this thread). Now, it wasn't until years after Imagesoft was morphed into Sony Interactive Studios, moved to San Francisco from Los Angeles (and Olaf being pushed out of Sony) as well as New York being shut down that I learned Olaf had a working prototype.

2. There were two internal titles that were developed, but only about half way before canned. Those titles were "Hook" which was eventually released on SNES cartridge, and Sega CD (outside of graphics, was representative of what the SNES CD/Playstation version would have been), and "Forteza". Forteza was a rail-based space shooter with CG pre rendered FMV backgrounds. Forteza was not released on any platform.

3. I've seen people cite yellowing of plastic as suspicious. As a model collector, I have rare models never displayed but stored in their boxes that have yellowed. Yellowing of plastic is not always light or heat driven.

4. Regarding cartridges being exposed for access to the EEPROM chips, at Sony Imagesoft we never assembled them in cartridges unless going out to press or other display. Internally we used the chips on bare cartridge circuit boards (also other platforms too).

5. There are at least two more Playstation units intact, at Sony Japan.

I would love to see this unit working, and willing to connect the owner to an engineer that would get the unit working who is with Sony and has all the proper connections to restore it as necessary to working condition (and no, there is no more tooling for cases laying around). But I'm sure he's inundated with emails and requests - reach out to me if interested.

Now, if I could just get my former boss to dig up the VHS tape of Forteza, we could make this discussion more interesting

Jerry is whom I gave the dev hardware to. And I was corrected as well that there are three more SNES units in Japan, one of which is quite different in appearance. I'll coordinate a trip to Japan over the coming months and investigate further.

As has been said by other staff, let's try to keep this friendly, positive and on topic. Bear in mind the first three forum rules:

Respect others or be destroyed.

No flaming.

If you don't have something to say, don't say anything.

Those who flame or are disrespectful to others will incur warning points. Here are some points to bear in mind:

It's great to see new users because of this thread, but please make use of the search facility (currently ignores any words 3 characters or less - sorry!) as we've talked about SNES CD many times before, and you'll probably find the information already.

The item does seem to be real, so let's not continue speculating on that.

PSUs are really easy to get hold of. We don't need dozens of people offering them - he can pick one up in a local store.

It's his to do with as he pleases. Keep it, sell it, smash it, open it up, refuse to open it up, plug it in without checking voltages, take it to a game shop - his decision.

He's said he won't open it up, so let's not keep asking him to do so. Yes, it would be a good idea to check it over before powering it up - but refer to the previous point again.

I believe he said he's taking it to a friend of his who is knowledgeable about video game systems and happens to run a retro shop - not randomly taking it to a game shop who's going to destroy it. Quit speculating. If you have something you know nothing of and you know someone in that field, you take it to them.

Any statements you make, back up with fact. Wikipedia is made up of user content and is NOT a factual source unless it cites credible sources.

I know there are a lot of posts, but read through them before asking questions (many people asked what the socket looked like AFTER he posted clear photos including the back of the unit).

Speculating on value isn't really helpful. The bottom line is that nobody knows what it would sell for if auctioned. And that's what he'd need to do in order to find out.

Regarding the history of the SNES CD, we've covered it before and it's probably best to do so in another thread - keep this one on topic, and the topic is the specific unit that has been found. I'll put something on the Wiki once I've got it up and running properly. A few notes for now:

Sony first worked on a solution with Nintendo, then Philips, then Sony again (possibly with Philips).

There are numerous conceptual drawings / mock-ups / prototypes / dev kits for a number of these designs.

Initially, the CD add-on was to be exactly that - an add-on. There were at least three conceptual drawings with Super Famicom styling.

Sony went on to make Play Station, apparently alone, which is what has been unearthed. That then became PlayStation, a completely separate unit.

The previous unearthed unit was a development kit. It's the MSF-1 unit with the "Mickey Mouse" shaped controller. Game-Rave posted pictures years ago. They were on the forums, too. Google it.

Yes, this unit differs slightly from the Rainbow-logo one.

Yes, Sony made another styled Play Station, in dark grey. Again, Game-Rave released pictures.

200 units were made? PROVE IT. There is ZERO proof of this. It being on Wikipedia means nothing - there's no source. Yes, it's a perfectly reasonable, maybe even small amount if it was to be a dev kit. There's just no proof, though.

Sony apaprently unveiled the Play Station at CES in 1991. That was in Chicago on 1-4 June. REALLY?! Super Nintendo wasn't released until August 23 1991 in the US, and you expect us to believe that Sony unveiled their console in America at that show? No - it didn't happen. There is NO PROOF. What you WILL find is video footage of The Nintendo stand, which was all about SNES. Why would that person not video the Play Station, too? You'll find footage of the CDTV, Neo Geo, Game Gear, SNES - all new consoles. No Play Station, though. Some say it was a Tokyo electronics fair, which seems more plausible - although I'm not sure they got the name right! And the Tokyo Toy Show that year didn't appear to have it.

I've also told Brian he's welcome to create a thread if he wants to talk industry stuff that's not Play Station related.

Anyway, feel free to continue talking about this unit in the thread. Anything not directly related to Dnldbld's unit should go in the SNES CD history discussion thread. Thanks!

The X generally denoted "Experiment". Even with the original 3D PlayStation, that stuck around long after PlayStation was launched - we just all kept saying "PSX" instead of "PlayStation". I'd surmise that the X in the SFX-100 meant the same thing.

Sorry I haven't been keeping you guys up to date. I've been really busy the past couple days and my phone has been blowing up like crazy. I'm in the midst of talking to some people about the console and getting it verified and everything. I'm not going to sell it right now and I don't plan on doing anything stupid like plugging it in or taking it apart, so everybody just calm down. The majority of the messages I have received made me assume that everyone out there just thinks I'm some dumb ass who got really lucky. Sure, I got lucky with this find, but I assure you I'm not retarded. Anyway, I'll let you guys know what's going on with it once I hear more about some plans. It's really hard for me to decide what to do with it because my mind has just been racing ever since this exploded.

I got your message. The person at the retro game store I was referring to is a good friend of mine and very knowledgeable with these kinds of things. I will see what he has to say, but I can tell you now, it probably won't be much. He probably has seen all of this online and doesn't even know it's me because I don't believe he knows my last name. He'll probably just be speechless and not have anything good to say at all lol.

/u/chooter was outed without admins being notified so other subreddits are collaborating in a blackout to protest. That includes /r/gaming, which is where this thread was hosted.

Many other subreddits were also reliant on /u/chooter's services as an official contact point for the organisation of AMAs on reddit, including /r/science, /r/books, and /r/Music. So, in order to express their dissatisfaction with the difficulties they have been placed in without /u/chooter, similar to /r/IAmA, they have made themselves private.

I'm going to throw the user a message and ask if he'd like to hop on here and give us some info.

Wow! Never thought we'd see one of these =D Thanks for posting the picture MBMM!

Just to confirm, is this the CD Add-On that Nintendo and Sony were collaborating on? Or is it a very early prototype design for the Playstation? I know the answer could be (and probably is) both, but just thought I'd try to get some clarification - especially since the reddit is private for the time being.

I guess the immediate question is, do you know much about its story? E.g. how your Father ended up with it?

Click to expand...

My dad worked for a company, apparently one of the guys he used to work with, I think his name was Olaf, used to work at Nintendo and when my dads company went bankrupt, my dad found it in a box of "junk" he was supposed to throw out.

Wow! Never thought we'd see one of these =D Thanks for posting the picture MBMM!

Just to confirm, is this the CD Add-On that Nintendo and Sony were collaborating on? Or is it a very early prototype design for the Playstation? I know the answer could be (and probably is) both, but just thought I'd try to get some clarification - especially since the reddit is private for the time being.

Thank you very much for answering our questions Dnldbld! It's amazing how these prototype systems get around haha. I hope you can find a DC Cable that works - I know we'd all love to see what's on the CD and cartridge =D

Wow! Never thought we'd see one of these =D Thanks for posting the picture MBMM!

Just to confirm, is this the CD Add-On that Nintendo and Sony were collaborating on? Or is it a very early prototype design for the Playstation? I know the answer could be (and probably is) both, but just thought I'd try to get some clarification - especially since the reddit is private for the time being.

Click to expand...

If I remember right, there was the CD add on and then an all-in-one system. Both were from the deal. Think of it like the Sega CD and JVC X'EYE or CDX.

It's great you want to answer questions, but please refrain from double posting. If you want to multi-quote posts, just click on the posts you want to reply to and the reply will appear in the quick reply box.

How did a prototype collaboration between two Japanese companies end up in the US?

It's great you want to answer questions, but please refrain from double posting. If you want to multi-quote posts, just click on the posts you want to reply to and the reply will appear in the quick reply box.

How did a prototype collaboration between two Japanese companies end up in the US?

Click to expand...

Apparently my dad got it from a man named Olaf who used to work at Nintendo